ALL MY BEST DAYS HAVE BEEN NIGHTS: YUGOSLAVIAN CINEMA OF REVOLUTION

In the early days of the dissolution of the Yugoslavian state, right after the splintering now known as balkanization, in spite of the impending political chaos, the vibrant Yugoslavian counter-cultural movement was in the midst of a moment of particular power.

After the death of Josip Broz Tito, beloved state leader in power since 1945, and the disintegration of the dream of Brotherhood and Unity and the beginning of the territorial war and ethnic conflict in Bosnia between nationalists in Croatia, Serbia and Bosnia, increasingly alienated youth of the nation-turned-cipher were drawn towards the anti-authoritarianism and nihilism of punk.

This series of films reflects a period in the Balkans where filmmakers in Yugoslavia’s Hollywood and the counter-culture shared spaces and sought to criticize the destabilizing regime and a society unraveling around them.

OUTSIDER
aka AUTSAJDER
Dir. Andrej Kosak, 1997
Slovenia, 105 min.
in Slovenian/Serbo-Croatian with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, JUNE 6 – 10PM
THURSDAY, JUNE 11 – 10PM
MONDAY, JUNE 15 – 7:30PM
TUESDAY, JUNE 23 – 7:30PM

While OUTSIDER was released in a Slovenia six years after it was the first state to secede from the Yugoslavian bloc on 25th of June, 1991, and following the onslaught of war in Bosnia, there was a trend of escapist cinema already in the former Yugoslavia. However, while OUTSIDER focused itself critically against the Titoist regime of communist Yugoslavia, it was also a nostalgic look backwards to a time of peace and prosperity while war raged not far beyond its doorstep.

The film, set in Ljubljana in 1979, follows Sead, a Bosnian transplant to Slovenia following his father a career officer with the Yugoslav National Army, finds himself a misfit transplant and unwanted Bosnian in a rigid Slovenian high school of socialist pageants and violent cliques. He quickly becomes involved with a group of young punks and quickly adopt the moniker “Sid”, as he rises to become the leader of the motley-crew-cum-rock-band. He quickly finds however that his new life and friendships come with harsh consequences as they all become social outcasts, targeted by the police, military and rejected by other proper communist Yugoslavians for their shameless individualism and their disorder. When Kadunc, the band’s drummer, is picked up by the military for vandalizing a building with statements disparaging head of state Josip Broz Tito, he is imprisoned. Soon after Kadunc’s release the disgrace of his actions marks the lives of Sead and the rest of his bandmates and quickly tears all their lives apart.

Far from blind Yugo-nostalgia, Kosak’s OUTSIDER looks back towards individual persecution in the Yugoslavian system and indicts an unwillingness to move beyond a culture of conformity and obedience as the reason for the failure of Yugoslavia’s utopian dream.

THE FALL OF ROCK AND ROLL
aka KAKO JE PROPAO ROKENROL
Dir. Goran Gajic, 1989.
Bosnia, 106 min.
In Serbo-Croatian with English subtitles.

SATURDAY, JUNE 13 – 10PM
THURSDAY, JUNE 18 – 10PM
SUNDAY, JUNE 21 – 7:30PM
MONDAY, JUNE 29 – 7:30PM

Goran Gajic’s surreal counter-culture comedy THE FALL OF ROCK AND ROLL was made in 1989 right before the start of the Bosnian war and at the beginning of the end of the golden age of Yugoslavian subculture and the heyday of Balkan punk. Gajic’s film was a virtual who’s who of Yugoslavian punk rockers and counter-cultural icons from this period, like Anica Dobra, Sonja Savic, Srdjan Todorovic and the lead singer of ex-yu punk band Disciplina Kicme in a cameo as slacker-superhero and mascot the Green Tooth, among others. All of these young Balkan men and women were part of the same cohort among the bright stars that made up the collaborative Belgrade art and rock scene which had also produced other films like CRNI MARIJA/BLACK MARIAH and DAVITELJ PROTIV DAVITELJ/ STRANGLER VS. STRANGLER.

THE FALL OF ROCK AND ROLL is a composed as a picaresque comedy in three parts, all written by different screenwriters and directors and with musicians from three Yugoslavian rock powerhouses, Elektricni Orgazm, Idoli and Disciplina Kicme. The three scenarios begin this ramble through the streets and back-alleys of Belgrade with a wager between Koma, a failed punk rocker (Srdjan Todorovic) and his producer father, a folk-singer staging a contest to see who can perform a more popular song leading Koma to become a masked folk singer calling himself Ninja. The film quickly careens into the second scenario, chronicling a romantic episode between a young punk (Anica Dobra) who is wooed by Darko, a man claiming to be Dracula. In the third Eve and Djuro, a troubled pair of frustrated bohemians, an aspiring rock musician and a struggling designer, who are on the verge of conceiving a child but are driven astray by a mysterious love letter.

THE FALL OF ROCK AND ROLL in spite of its absurdist elements is also a reflection collaborative project of Belgrade’s urban rock subculture preserved in amber. Its lighthearted approach and devil-may-care attitude are still valued highly by the now grown youth of Yugoslavia who remember this moment as a time of joy and experimentation before the austere war years soon to follow.

BLACK BOMBER
aka CRNI BOMBARDER
Dir by Darko Bajic, 1992.
Serbia, 116 min.
In Serbo-Croatian with English subtitles.

THURSDAY, JUNE 4 – 10PM
MONDAY, JUNE 8 – 10PM
SATURDAY, JUNE 20 – 10PM
MONDAY, JUNE 29 – 10PM

CRNI BOMBARDER/THE BLACK BOMBER upon its release it a disintegrated Yugoslavia in the midst of the ravages of war became an allegory for resistance among the youth of Belgrade’s artistic and counter-culture set who had faced violent repression by Slobodan Milosevic’s political regime. In many ways it foreshadowed the resistance to come in the forms of OTPOR! and the guerilla theater of the Serbian protest movements of the late 90’s.

The film, set in a dystopian cityscape, is meant to represent a Milosevic-era Belgrade strewn with barricades, martial law and other trappings of wartime. Blackie, an amnesiac radio DJ is finds himself censored by the government, he begins to push the boundaries of acceptable programming. He soon finds himself being chased by nationalist gunmen and the secret police and in the midst of an increasingly self-destructive attempt to speak truth to power. In the process, he sparks a romance with Luna, played by Ana Dobric, a ferocious punk singer who is waging an internal battle between creatively resisting the regime at home with like-minded rebels like Blackie or artistically thriving in self-imposed exile. After he is forced out of his home-base in the national radio station Blackie finally takes to the streets in an unmarked van, the Black Bomber to broadcast a pirate radio program in the midst of widespread repression and civil unrest of the capital, unintentionally sparking a youth uprising and becoming the voice of youth resistance in the form of his radio persona “The Walking Ghost”.

Not far enough away from reality to be science fiction and not far enough from Hollywood forms to escape tropes of romance this film nonetheless captures the miasma of a generation of ex-Yugoslavs caught between political conflicts in a nation divided, yet still struggling to remain young and alive.

KRIK? KRAK! TALES OF A NIGHTMARE
Dir: Jac Avila & Vanyoska Gee, 1988.
78 min. Haiti.
In Creole/French/English with subtitles.
Special thanks to Facets.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 3 – 7:30PM
SUNDAY, JUNE 7 – 5PM
TUESDAY, JUNE 16 – 7:30PM
TUESDAY, JUNE 23 – 10PM

A blistering travelogue of hell, Jac Avila and Vanyoska Gee’s classic surrealist-documentary KRIK? KRAK! takes a traditional Haitian call-and-response and morphs it into a broad survey of national instability. The filmmakers capture roiling scenes of unimaginable poverty and repression, juxtaposed against the tropical paradise drawn by the official-ese of 24-year president François “Papa Doc” Duvalier and his backers in Washington.

Featuring interviews with the secret police, refugees, cane sugar harvesters, US immigration officials and black magic priests, Avila and Gee’s landscape of Haiti appears doomed to gridlocked schizophrenia. As the “first free black republic” is passed from one Duvalier to the next, KRIK? KRAK! deals images like clods of dirt, crumbling whenever the narrative begins to get a foothold – the ultimate document of life under voodoo dictatorship.

“Krik? Krak! carries the political documentary into the realm of the fantastic. The story of Haiti’s misery under two generations of Duvaliers is told impressionistically, mingling absolutely extraordinary documents of daily life (including an interview with Papa Doc himself) and scenes from fiction films to convey what a straightforward documentary cannot: the continual shifts between levels of reality in Haitian life, some of which are inaccessible to the camera, in particular, the omnipresence of the Voodoo religion. Krik? Krak! is at the same time a great horror film in the tradition of Haxan (Witchcraft through the Ages).” – Bill Krohn, Cahiers du Cinema

L’ENFANT SECRET
Dir. Philippe Garrel, 1979
France, 92 min.
In French with English subtitles

SUNDAY, MAY 3 – 5 PM
MONDAY, MAY 11 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, MAY 19 – 10 PM
SATURDAY, MAY 30 – 10 PM

L’ENFANT SECRET is an unbearably fragile film about unbearably fragile people. Every scene flirts with cinematic disaster, images play with overexposure, dialogue fades away under music taking exposition down with them. This is one of ​several​ films Philippe Garrel made about or with​ long time partner​ Nico, this film focusing on her relationship with her estranged son​,​ who ​Garrel ​has named​​ Swann. In addition to Proust, Garrel also asks his audience to think about Bresson​ when watching this film​, using two Bressonian models as actors, Anne Wiazemsky (AU HASARD BALTHAZAR) and Henri de Maublanc (THE DEVIL PROBABLY). ​The film also deals with Garrel’s shock treatment cure for heroin addiction and the beginning of Nico’s own experience with the drug. ​Despite all these lurid details, the film is not propelled by force of its narrative. ​One could almost experience the film as nothing more than a repetition of ​a moment ​in which two people ​collapse into each other’s arms​. There is a story, ​but as it’s written, it’s so small and weak that it​s emotional and intellectual heart​ ​can only move through the mechanics ​of cinematic compositions like electricity through a circuit.​ Images of violence and despair have more to do with the shapes and shades of grey Garrel expects you to watch him build poetry with throughout the film than it does with a confession from his torrid experience with drugs, cinema, love, and fame – but at the same time, he has plenty to say about that too.

HIT 2 PASS
Dir. Kurt Walker, 2014
Canada, 72 min.

SUNDAY, MAY 3 – 7:30 PM
THURSDAY, MAY 14 – 7:30 PM
TUESDAY, MAY 26 – 10 PM
SUNDAY, MAY 31 – 7:30 PM

In Kurt Walker’s magnificent debut HIT 2 PASS, what initially appears a goofy road trip movie soon gives itself away as a scrupulous documentary dig into the Auto Racing Association of Prince George, British Columbia (billed on its website as “the playground of power”), and its annual “hit to pass” marathon. The rule is that drivers must collide with another car in order to pass it, and the film gives chase to three weeks spent by a future contestant and his father refurbishing a hot rod for the tournament, with special attention given to the endless nuts-and-bolts work that will make possible a few hours of summertime fun for a small crowd of spectators. In the first half of HIT 2 PASS, Walker’s command of multi-camera montage proves a delight, with cameras affixed to drones, mounted within the vehicle and even handed to children watching the track during the derby.

The simple phraseology of these rituals (the film’s very title a “sequelization” of an existing event, explicating that documentary is, unto itself, a dubious format of adaptation) begin to take on chewier, more socio-historico-politico-cultural kinds of meanings following the film’s one unedited, isolated sit-down interview. Walker is not just after cheap thrills, or even their material costs, but rather a vast and complicated cross-section of remembering and spectacle (itself a kind of willful un-learning). Unassuming at first blush, his images hang in memory as if glimpsed from a passing car on a long ride home, like a magic-hour graffito that reads, “OIL = DEATH”. Hit 2 Pass is as sincere, funny and mysterious as contemporary experimental cinema gets.

“Imagine Red Line 7000, the unforgettable race film by Hawks, crossed with Miguel Gomes’ Our Beloved Month of August via the intermediary of a ZX Spectrum and this would give you something resembling Hit 2 Pass.” – Francisco Ferreira, publico

“The atmosphere is all small-town affability and thick-sliced hoser accents. This alone would make a fascinating feature, but Walker ups the ante by making the assembly of the film just as interesting as the assembling of the Storozinkis’ hot rod. Segments organically trail off where other docs would cut. Off-screen questions and banter are left in. Many sequences look like abstract geometrical compositions scored by field recordings. Rather than make the film feel sloppy, they invigorate Hit 2 Pass with a vibrant sense of playfulness.” – Derek Godin, Dim The House Lights

“Hit 2 Pass is an act of genuine and tender interrogation and self-discovery that explores the gap between the immaterial excitement of video games and the complexity of life. Like the most humble and earnest first features, Walker’s film is open about its own imperfections so as to carve out its own distinctive and tentative place in the saturated imaginary of contemporary cinema.” –Giovanni Vimercati, Film Comment